


Lost and Found

by orphan_account



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Childhood Friends, Hurt/Comfort, Kenma and Kuroo, M/M, So much angst, but im not because they're really cute okay, im so sorry, now teenager friends?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-28
Updated: 2014-09-28
Packaged: 2018-02-19 04:21:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2374343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Who bothers to look for the kid who hides too well?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lost and Found

Kenma wasn't someone who gained. It had started when he was a kid; he had lost his parents to divorce and the cycled habits that brought them down afterwards. He had lost his dream when the teachers told him he wasn't smart enough to be a vet- that if he didn't care about his grades how could he expect to make it into a good college? He lost his faith when he decided to try for school, to push himself to the top and passed out one day in the middle of volleyball from sleep deprivation. He lost his friends more slowly through the years as he drew in on himself. It was a gradual loss, but in the long run he found it to be unavoidable.

 

>   
> _“Don't you want to do anything?”_
> 
>   
> _“Come on, let's go outside or something!”_
> 
>   
> _“You're no fun anymore.”_

  
They faded from his life like pictures on a fogged up mirror. As his ability to cope started to dwindle away, only one figure remained. Kuroo, and his staunch rejection of common ideals. Kuroo, and his bedhead hair and bright smile. He was the only one who understood Kenma to his core. He was never sure why his friend stayed with him through the years, but it had to be some sort of loyalty to what they had been when they were younger; when Kenma talked and was vibrant and bright like he deserved. Because of that, Kuroo stayed through the bad days. He was the only one that he hadn't lost. He was an unflickering flame, unwavering as the harsh winds of isolation blew over and over again. With Kuroo, Kenma could see past his own darkness and bask in the other boy's glow.

  
There were some days when the light wasn't enough. Where his friend was an illuminating flame, he was all dark. Swirling, writhing, eat-you-alive darkness whose shadowed claws crushed whatever redemption they could grasp. He was negativity clothed in a body that felt both suffocatingly tight and yet empty all at once. He had lost so much that it left him hollow. The nothing crowding beneath his skin gave him somewhere to hide, at least, when it all got to be too much. He could burrow under his blankets and pretend the world outside didn't exist, and that he had all made it up. Pinch his arm and suddenly he'd be awake, sunday sunlight streaming through the window that had been in his old house. The one they had lost after his mother stopped working her regular job. It was all he could do, most days, to lock himself inside his mind and throw away the key. He wanted to get as far as he could from everything else in the world, and yet in that he found himself gravitating towards Kuroo.

Subconsciously, he was the kind of guy who loved being loved. The knowledge that another person cared that he existed and wasn't hiding was what he needed most from his interactions outside of himself. He craved the mild affection that most people saw on a daily basis like starving men crave food. Kenma wanted the comforting touch of physical contact to prove that he was still around, that he wasn't just a ghost that fell in and out of peoples peripheral visions and that he still had a purpose. Though he wasn't one to talk about that need a lot, he expressed it in every one of his actions towards Kuroo. He said enough in the way he nestled into their rare hugs, or drifted over to his side and brushed up against him briefly enough to make it seem like an accident if anyone was watching. He thought that the contented sighs that he let out when they finally got home after walking together were practically screaming desperation, but it seemed most days that the world wasn't listening. To him, it spoke volumes when he napped on his friend's shoulder during long car trips- it underlined it, embossed it, yelled it to the wind that he just needed someone to care.

 

>   
> _“He's so distant, you know?”_
> 
>   
> _“I wonder if he actually cares about anyone.”_

  
He was pathetic. He knew it with every part of his being on the bad days. He was repulsed by the way that he clung to Kuroo like he was the last thing keeping him alive. How he spent all his time trying to fight the tide pulling him out by splashing frantically at the water dragging him out, only to find Kuroo as the rope bringing him back in. It wasn't fair to his friend- his only friend- that Kenma was the way he was: quiet, unreasonable, cold. Part of him wanted to run over when he saw the other boy and shout and laugh like his other friends did. That pathetic part of him that wanted normalcy, like he was even capable of that. He wasn't cold or unfeeling, he was just so bogged down by the loss that he had no idea how to tell him what he wanted to say.

  
The silence was interrupted by his coughing. Winter had come to stay, it seemed, after the first snowfall had crested on rooftops last week. With it, of course, came the flus and colds that ruined perfect attendance records yearly. Kenma had never bothered with those. What was the point? If the school board wanted to insist that he was stupid, then it wasn't worth the effort to prove them wrong. He stayed home when he felt like it-- or at least when his mother could be roused to call the school and tell them that he was going to be absent that day. Once or twice he'd thought about just staying without the bother of trying ot coinvince his mother to fight her hangover long enough to make the call, but he didn't have the guts for it.

  
He couldn't skip. People would pay more attention to him if he skipped, but they were the wrong people. They gave the wrong kind of attention. That stuff, being yelled at, being told that he should really get his stuff together, made him feel lost. And then he would start crying, and his mother would be called; it was all a vastly unpleasant experience, if the occasions in middle school were anything to go by.

 

Kuroo cut classes whenever he felt like it.

  
If Kenma decided to stay home, Kuroo came. No matter what, that boy was like clockwork. He showed up right after practice with two covered containers of soup ready for consumption. Without fail he'd apologize because he was running late for some reason or another, and step inside without being invited. After all this time, he spent as much of his life at Kenma's house as he did his own. Despite typically not even really being sick, the boy ate the soup and settled into whatever game they'd be playing that day. He ate it mechanically, because he knew it would make Kuroo feel better if he was eating. Somehow he always knew when it was a bad day, despite them not having classes together- those days where he just couldn't muster the energy to roll himself out of bed in the morning and force himself to go through his routines. He showed up every time. Kenma thanked him every time, but never out loud.

  
This was one of those times where he was actually sick, though. He'd succumbed to the bug flying around their school, and had known better than to expose more of his classmates to it. So Kuroo was here.

  
“Jesus, man. You're gonna end up coughing up a lung over there.” Kenma cast a cursory glance over at his friend before looking back to the screen, following the bright pixels of characters as they moved without really focusing on any of them. He'd played this game before, as had Kuroo. At his request, though, it had been pulled up from under layers of undone laundry and popped into his playstation. The animation was pretty awful, although it had been good for the time. It brought back memories he didn't want to deal with- not now, not ever.

  
“Dude, I've killed you three times in the last five minutes. You kick my ass at these kind of games normally. Are you dying or what?”

  
“'m fine,” Kenma said, idly watching his fingers as they danced over the controls. His thumb slipped and his character went plunging off the bridge he had been walking across. He had forgotten that the controls were so sensitive. He swore under his breath and started to take a short cut to catch up with the monster, who had run far enough ahead that he was probably going to fail this level anyway. He had to try at these, though. If he didn't try at these, what was the point of playing?

  
“You may not be dying, but it looks like your avatar's taking a plunge.” The blocker snickered at his own joke, turning in circles as he waited for Kenma to catch up for him where he waited. He was always waiting for Kenma to run after him, and without fail the boy always did. Even in video games, the dynamics that were their reality played out with startling clarity. Maybe it was because he was sick, but Kenma found himself caring more than normal that about what he did every day.

  
“I'm slowing you down," He muttered. “You should just go and kill it without me,” he said. The game paused. He looked down again at his fingers to make sure he hadn't pressed the 'start' button on accident, but his fingers were true to where they needed to be for him to run. He hadn't paused it then, which meant that Kuroo had. His eyes narrowed slightly and his head cocked to the side. Why? He wanted to ask him, but he knew that he would get the response just the same without. Most of what he said was left unspoken, and somehow his friend read him well enough to carry on their conversation aloud.

  
“I think you're missing the point of this whole game thing,” Kuroo drawled, stretching with the controller between his hands. He yawned and flopped back onto the bed and his hair ruffled accordingly, somehow managing to get even messier fanned out onto the blanket. “I'm playing,” he said slowly, letting each word hang somewhat purposefully in the stuffy warm air of Kenma's bedroom. “I'm playing because I want to play the game with you. There's no point to me going off and killing it by myself, though I know I totally could.” He wasn't a modest guy- everything about the cocky grin that spread with practiced ease over his face shouted it. “So I'm going to wait here, and we're going to kill this goddamn monkey thing together, or die trying.”

  
“This game was made for ten year olds. We're not going to die.”

  
“That bridge was made for ten year olds too, and yet you seem to be a life down.”

  
All he got in reply was a slight hmpf of acknowledgement. As Kenma leaned slightly to the side, just barely brushing their legs together, Kuroo got all the he needed to know. Today wasn't a bad day. A smile, less shit-eating than his friend's and more quiet drifted across Kenma's features. Another grin reflected and amplified onto the other's face as he unpaused the game and put his arm around his smaller counter part. He knew. He didn't understand, but he always knew.

**Author's Note:**

> So I've recently gotten into HQ and I really wanted to try my hand at writing these two dorks and I'm not sure if I've done in right but I'm so bad at minor characters OTL. There's obviously more to this and I'm probably going to end up making this a somewhat longer work, but as of yet it's just a bunch of drabbles I've written for these frickers. I'm probably going to be posting more of this fandom as time goes on, so watch out for it! Haikyuu is a way of life join it live it love it


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